Re: [PATCH 01/14] kmemleak: Add the base support

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Fri Dec 19 2008 - 17:15:22 EST


On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:02:55 +0100
Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> * Pekka Enberg <penberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Catalin Marinas
> > <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > This patch adds the base support for the kernel memory leak
> > > detector. It traces the memory allocation/freeing in a way similar to
> > > the Boehm's conservative garbage collector, the difference being that
> > > the unreferenced objects are not freed but only shown in
> > > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak. Enabling this feature introduces an
> > > overhead to memory allocations.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > Looks good to me. I have only reviewed this lightly but all my major
> > concerns have been addressed so feel free to add my:
> >
> > Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Andrew, do you have any principial objections against having this in

Nope.

> v2.6.29?

That might be a bit harder. I'll take a look.

> This dragged on for a long time, and i think the debug output is useful
> and it tells us something that we have no other tool for at the moment to
> figure out. We can tell stuck tasks, stuck files and other stuck resources
> easily - we can even see fast slab leaks, but we cannot really tell slow,
> long-term slab leaks apart from regular slab prints, and we cannot
> identify the source of them. The false positive rate of kmemleak has
> decreased substantially as well, over the earlier design.

Sounds good, thanks.
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